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Behind the mountains

is the title of the book I read about Ecuador. It’s written by Nancy Wiltink and as far as I could find it’s not translated to english.

It’s about a dutch family from Amsterdam that’s going to live in a small town in Ecuador. What I liked about the begin of this book is that it is about all the small things you need to do when living abroad for a year. Where do you leave your stuff? What do you do with healt securance? How to get your kids to school? When that all is taken care of they travel to Ecuador to work at a hotel.

The back of the book told me there would be a murder and I thought the book would be a detictive, but it’s not. The relationship between the family and owners of the hotel is already difficult, they have different ideas on how to do the job best and after the murder this relationship becomes even more complex. Their feeling of safety disappears, not only in their work relation, but in everything. They decide to move away.

The family starts working in a very small hotel in a very small town. They become a part of the comunity and start living a real ecuadorian life. The story tells about many small things, a trip to the market, a conversation with a teacher, celebrating christmas. I loved reading this book because of these small things. It’s probably how it is to live in an other country. At first everything is special, but after a while the beautifull vieuw becomes normal, the weird cultural differences become normal and you live your life just as you would at home.

At the end of the book the family prepares to go back to Amsterdam, but they also want to stay in Ecuador. They go home with emigrating in their heads. Living in Amsterdam needs as much adjustment as living in Ecuador needed, but after a while they are happy again. I wonder if they ever moved to Ecuador for real.